


Nightshade

by NeoVenus22



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-03
Updated: 2010-02-03
Packaged: 2017-10-06 23:58:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/59133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeoVenus22/pseuds/NeoVenus22
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John doesn't know if he's made a mistake or not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nightshade

"You're leaving?" John says, and his voice is thick with almost-sleep, thick enough to hide the whine hidden under the surface.

Teyla bends and stretches to find her clothing on the floor. She does not hide herself in the sheets like other women he's known; she has a beautiful body, and she knows this with pride but not vanity. She's not ashamed, especially not after sharing intimacy with John. She recognizes that he's admiring, but she's not flaunting. She just has nothing to hide.

"I have no reason to stay," she says, and it's not nearly as callous as it sounds. Her voice is a ragged but melodious alto, and he remembers the way it purred nonsense into his ear in the height of pleasure. He didn't know it could reach that timbre, didn't know it could sound so rich and terrible and sexy. "We are done, are we not?"

"I've never heard it put quite that way before..." he says, and affects his most sheepish and humiliated expression. This could be going much better.

At that, she grants him a slow upward curve of her lips. He's probably only imagining the pity in them. "I'm sorry. I do not mean to offend you, but I do not know what else you expect."

He hadn't really been expecting any of this, to be honest. "You could sleep," he offers. "There's room."

"I do not want to bother you, John." She's unusually apologetic, and his name sounds alien on his tongue, no matter how many times he's tried to convince her it's okay to use it.

"You won't bother me," he says, which is a generous stretching of the truth, because the sheet is thin even when pooled in his lap, and the bed is small enough that he almost wrenched out his shoulder earlier trying to move.

She's pulled her pants on now, the tired pair of spare BDUs Elizabeth had wrangled for her years back, the ones that are a size too big, but Teyla still refuses to give up, though she has better-fitting pants now. Her breasts remained achingly bare, dusted by the ends of her rumpled hair, and she turns to look at him. Her eyes are tired, but clear. As is her intent. "Is there any reason you want me to stay?"

In all honesty, he hasn't really been lonely since he stepped foot in this city, but tonight, the walls of his room scream of Teyla too much for her to just leave. "I wouldn't mind the company," he says, which doesn't really address the heart of the matter, but is the best he can come up with, given the circumstances.

Teyla continues to gaze at him unblinkingly, reading him, studying him, gauging the true depth of his emotions in the way he carries himself, the way he flops over his mattress and scratches at his scalp. The room lights dim to an ambient glow, as if the entire city Atlantis is trying to win her over to his side, as well. Her features soften, a shadow flits across her face, chased just as hastily by a smile. She doesn't say yes, but she stoops to pick a wad of cloth off the floor. It's his discarded t-shirt, and she smoothes it out, lifting it over her head and her arms. It drapes over her, and he doesn't remember ever being that big. It makes him grin idiotically, tiny Teyla in his wrinkled shirt, and he's embarrassed by his tenderness.

John moves so she can lie down, then realizes that she's dressed and he's not, and he starts looking for his own pants. He's trying to cover the fact he's weirdly nervous around Teyla, of all people. He's wary of how he should behave, if he's stepping all over the practices of Athosian custom, which he never fully understands. He's screwed up so much of what she holds dear, inadvertently ignored things she holds dear, but this is different. He's been trying since day one to never blatantly disrespect her, and he worries that tonight will be the last straw.

She slides between his sheets with as much languid grace as he'd had a fumbling lack thereof, and he reaches for his pants, suddenly painfully aware of her eyes on his ass. He feels stupid, stupider still when she says, her voice measured with care, "I understand it will be difficult for you tomorrow, should we leave this room together."

And there it is, the other shoe, falling hard, mired in cement. Sinking deep below the mud like his dignity and his career. From the beginning, he's been picking and choosing which rules to follow to the letter, which to bend, which to break. Atlantis follows slightly different protocol, far away from the prying eyes of the U.S. military, which gave John license to misbehave a little. New galaxy, new rules.

John knew, from the moment he first looked at Teyla, the moment where he thought 'goddamn,' that he had to start making his own rules, so no one got hurt. But from the look of things, he listened to himself just as much as he'd listened to every other superior officer.

It's not as though he doesn't know that this situation is probably a bad idea, and it will probably come back to bite him in the ass in a big way. But at the moment, he's watching Teyla's arms hang soft, dark, and graceful from the sleeves of his shirt, stark against the pillow she rearranges under her, and consequences seem fuzzy, far off, and utterly unimportant.

"Yeah," he says, because through all of it, she's still watching him, still waiting, "it could get ugly tomorrow." Elizabeth could lecture. The Marines could leer. Caldwell could totally flip his shit. And none of it will be anything that he hasn't already told himself. "I'm not worried about me, though." He is, a little, because he loves this job and this post, and he doesn't want to lose either (or her), but he can't say that.

He also can't say that tomorrow, if John and Teyla are found out, certain others on base are going to be lecherous and rude and patronizing, and she is too beautiful and sweet, and is probably one of the last people in the galaxy, this or any other, that deserves to be heckled. Especially not because of him.

"Do not worry about me either, John," she says, eyes alight with understanding and warmth. "I would much rather be accused of something I have done, than something I have not." He knows she doesn't hold him responsible for that whole traitor-in-the-midst debacle with the military and the Athosians, and yet he can't help feeling a surge of guilt. He will always feel guilt where Teyla's concerned, because he's supposed to be representing an entire country, an entire planet, and he's not doing a bang-up job so far. "Lie with me," she says.

He almost says that no, he's sick of lying, sick of hiding behind half-truths and rules, until he realizes what she means. This isn't a crusade. It's one night, and they can deal with tomorrow when tomorrow actually comes. She's here now, she wants to be here and he wants her to want to be, and he should be grateful. He is.

He lies next to her obligingly, and his pants ride up a little around his calves, but he doesn't adjust them, and he wants to put his arm around her, but he can't do that just yet. He remains cautious, almost frozen. Her hip knocks against his; this bed isn't big enough for the both of them. He finally settles into a solution, folds his arms behind his head, and after a pause, she uses his elbow as a pillow, pressing his arm into the bed. Her hair scratches his bare skin comfortably. "On Athos, we used to lie like this in fields, and watch the stars."

"Used to do that on Earth, too," he says. He squints at the ceiling, trying to imagine the night's blanket stretched black and glittering above him. The only time he's ever been able to change the ceiling is in the chair. To think, if he'd never sat in that chair in Antarctica, he'd never be here. This the notion that begins to feed his loneliness, knowing that if he hadn't come, different decisions would have been made, maybe not as many disasters would have occurred. He was beginning to be dragged, however unwillingly, into the morbid and maudlin, when Teyla's voice permeated the darkness.

"Are the stars in your sky the same?" she asks. He figures she's being indulgent for his sake, but he suspects she doesn't know how quite how much she's saving him.

"No," he says. "We have different stars, and different constellations." It occurs to him the Athosians probably have the same practice, but a different word. "Stars that form shapes in the sky," he attempts to explain. Against his arm, he feels the vibrations of her nod. "There's Orion," he says, trying to remember, "and Draco. There's, uh, Scorpio, and Gemini, and something called the Big Dipper." He yawns, and Teyla is still against him, maybe asleep, maybe just waiting for him to continue. "Something about a bear," he thinks sleepily, and he doesn't know if he's talking aloud or not, "something about a dog..."

His mouth is running like water, words spilling out without control, and he's not even paying attention to them. His only consolation is the idea Teyla isn't, either. John's only barely conscious, and his arms are starting to ache, and he rolls to one side, invading her space only a little, and his hand falls flat on her waist as he struggles to get more comfortable. He's hesitant, because he doesn't want to offend her or drive her off.

After a long silence in which he thinks he's asleep, and he's sure she is, Teyla finally turns, breathing into his naked shoulder, letting his hand slip further around her in something like safety and something like protection and something like want and something like need. At that, a switch in John's brain flips, and he wakes up even if his eyes don't open, and he senses this idea rather than actively think it. He and Teyla are actually a lot alike. They are growing up strangers in this city, thrust into positions of power perhaps before they were ready. John thinks she's much better at handling it than he is; she's much stronger. Maybe that's why he needed her to stay.

In his limbo, where he doesn't know if he's thinking it or dreaming it, fingers brush against his arm, the pads digging into his skin a little bit, not quite clutching, but leaning towards it. John knows then, though he doubts he'll ever remember, that they're more alike than either of them has ever realized.


End file.
